Better Off Broken
by Asa Turney
Summary: A pair of related one-shots, set after T&T but before AAI, in which Ami Fey continues to do a great job from beyond the grave of weaving a common thread between everyone. FRANZISKA/ADRIAN and GUMSHOE/EDGEWORTH nonromantic friendship fluff.
1. Turnabout Teachings: Franziska & Adrian

**February 11, 2019 7:59 PM**

**Lordly Tailor**

**Main Exhibit Hall**

* * *

"Hmm..."

The blonde-bunned curator leaned against a marble column, peering over the rim of the book she was reading to watch the visitors file out of Lordly Tailor, one by one.

An antique clock chimed closing time. The woman set her book on a nearby countertop and mumbled to herself, "That time already? Looks like I'd better start locking up."

As she moved away from the column and toward the exit doors, she heard the delicate click of high-heeled footsteps approaching her from behind.

She spun around and instinctively bowed her head with the politeness of a true hostess, without looking the person whom she assumed to be a lately-arrived guest in the eyes. "We appreciate your patronage, but Lordly Tailor is now closed. Please join us again tomo-"

"Adrian Andrews," the visitor interrupted, "it's me."

"...Oh!" Immediately recognizing the voice, Adrian lit up with delight even before she even finished straightening up to see the familiar face. "Miss von Karma! It's... It's been a long time!"

"Yes," Franziska answered tersely. "...It seems you're doing fairly well for yourself."

Adrian smiled warmly in response, but then quickly grew anxious as to how she should continue the conversation. "Umm... So... Have you come to shop? Or to see the exhibit?"

"The exhibit?" Franziska inquired, glancing around the room.

"Oh, you're just in time to see it!" Adrian began to explain. "The truck's coming to ship it back to its home in just a couple of days. The exhibition was actually scheduled to be over quite a while ago, but this one piece garnered a lot of publicity after its attempted theft last October, so the showroom's been kept open by popular demand."

"Would you be referring to the piece over there?" Franziska motioned across the room, toward a tidy display case beneath a decorative banner featuring the exhibit name, _Treasures of Kurain_. The sole item atop its highest shelf was a fragile-looking purple and pink vase inscribed with the letters _A-M-I_.

"That's the one!" Adrian answered cheerily.

"It looks familiar," she observed. But, in comparison with the famous pottery she had observed as a child at various museums in Germany, this item didn't quite look to Franziska like high art. "What is it, exactly? A valuable artifact?"

"Well..." Adrian weighed her chances of convincing the prosecutor that the urn was as priceless as she'd tried to polish it up to look. She decided that the odds weren't in her favor. "...No. Actually, in terms of money, it's nearly worthless. It's a sacred urn belonging to a family of spirit mediums. Its value is mostly sentimental, I guess you could say."

"Huh." Franziska appeared less than impressed. "I wonder how it is that so many people could be so interested in a thing like that."

"I...I really don't think it's too hard to understand," Adrian replied. "It's something a lot of people can relate to. Miss von Karma, surely even _you_ have an item from your past that means a lot to you."

"..." Franziska's fingers lightly stroked the leather of the whip that dangled at her left side. "...I do not. Sentimentality is an impediment to perfection."

"I see..." the other woman responded, smiling because the prosecutor's subtle action had not gone unnoticed. "...Oh!" She suddenly clasped her hands together in front of her. "Before I forget..."

"What is it, Adrian Andrews?"

"I never got the chance," she said sincerely, "to properly thank you."

"Thank me? For what?"

"For your help in the case last year. And also...for keeping in contact with me."

"Yes, well... You needed it. That is why I returned to check on you today. But you can't always be relying on someone like me to be around to help you. You'll have to start learning how to take care of yourself."

"I know... Being in charge of this exhibit alone has given me a lot of experience, but I'm still..." She trailed off, her eyes cast downward.

"The kind of experience you need is far more physical in nature. When adversity strikes," – Franziska cracked her whip loudly against the tile floor to emphasize her point – "you must strike back."

"Wow... Well, maybe if I had a weapon like that, I could be a lot more confident!"

"..." Taking offense to that statement but determined to maintain her dignity, Franziska's expression grew stern. "I'll have you know that it's not the whip that makes the woman." With dexterous grace, Franziska gave the whip another loud crack before catching it in a perfect coil. "It's most certainly the other way around."

She then elegantly extended the hand that held the whip toward the woman who had been watching in awe.

"Well?" Franziska prompted.

"...Eh?"

"What are you waiting for, Adrian Andrews?" She pushed the whip closer to her. "Try it yourself."

Adrian jumped in shock. "M-me? You can't be serious, Miss von Karma!

"I am absolutely serious," Franziska replied, and her face matched her words. "You've said you wish to gain the experience to be more confident, have you not? This will be lesson number one."

"Ah..." Adrian's eyes darted nervously between the woman's daunting weapon and the woman's piercing gaze – a weapon in itself – and she could scarcely believe the words that were about to come out of her mouth. "I guess... Since all the other visitors are gone... I could give it a try..."

The precious item was transferred into Adrian's hesitant hands. It was then that she realized she had no idea how even to hold such a thing, much less to use it. She looked up at Franziska anxiously.

"Grip the handle tightly," came the prosecutor's first instructions.

Adrian obeyed.

"That's too stiff."

She relaxed her grip.

"That's not tight enough."

Adrian winced at her own apparent incompetence, and tried her best to readjust her hand once more. "Is this all right, Miss von Karma?"

"That will do. Now, **_do not_** let those fingers slip."

Stricken by Franziska's emphatic warning, Adrian didn't dare move a muscle.

"When you swing, instead concentrate your energy in the wrist," Franziska advised her. "Your grip must remain firm, but your wrist must follow through with the motion of the whip."

"Er... Like this?" Aiming at nothing in particular, Adrian lurched forward as if she were throwing a baseball. The end of the whip merely flailed about and fell limp on the floor without a crack.

"No, no!" Franziska scolded, snatching the whip back from the other woman. "Your swing needs much more force behind it. Allow me to demonstrate."

Within the blink of an eye, the leathery cord lashed backward and leapt forward again – straight toward an unintended target. A deafening noise rang through the room, but it wasn't the crisp sound of a well-executed midair crack. Rather, it was the clattering crash of a pile of purple-and-pink sentimental value.

Slowly becoming conscious of what had just happened, Franziska's eyes widened, her hand trembled, and she couldn't bring herself to utter a single sound.

Adrian was the first to break the silence...with an unexpected bout of laughter

Franziska's head snapped in the direction of the outburst with a deathly serious glare. The laughter mortified and irritated her. Her fingers tightened their grip around the handle of her whip, but she couldn't bring herself to raise it against the giggling woman in black.

"Wh-what sort of foolish fool could foolishly fool herself into thinking something is _funny_ at a time like this!?" she spat from between clenched teeth as she stormed toward the shattered mess.

"I'm...I'm..." Adrian stammered between giggles, following closely behind the prosecutor with quick, short steps. "I'm really sorry, Miss von Karma."

"Anyone who dares to make a joke out of a von Karma _will_ be sorry."

"No, that's not it! It's just that... You know, just a few months ago... I..." Adrian had finally curbed her laughter, but a beaming smile remained on her face. "...It seems like we have more in common than I thought."

Franziska paid little mind to the woman's words as she stood crossly over the scene of the ceramic crime, contemplating where to start cleaning up the remains. Casting down her weapon, she knelt before the pieces.

"Umm..." Adrian quickly knelt down beside her. "Here. I can help you fix it."

"Don't be ridiculous," the prosecutor retorted, evidently flustered but trying with all her might to regain her composure. "A von Karma is perfect in every way. A simple problem like this shouldn't be difficult for me to fix by myself."

After watching obediently for a few moments, Adrian had to stifle another giggle as Franziska awkwardly attempted to force the large purple shards together to spell _A-I-M._

_If she read the letters like that,_ Adrian thought, _it makes sense for her to have taken aim at it. But..._

She silently reached forward and switched the pieces back to _A-M-I_.

Franziska narrowed her eyes at the woman. "I knew that, Adrian Andrews."

**. . . . . . . . . .**

"...Wow! Once again, it's good as new!"

"Again?" Franziska repeated suspiciously.

"Ah... Nevermind," Adrian answered. "It's nothing."

The two women stood back to admire their handiwork. _A-M-I, _the urn properly read.

"..." A brief pause, before Franziska turned to her accomplice with an intense expression. "Adrian Andrews. You must realize that it was _necessary_ for me to use a proper target to demonstrate my form."

"Huh..." Adrian looked down at the prosecutor's whip, then back up to catch a flicker in the prosecutor's eye which told her she'd better play along. "Oh...! Right, of course!"

"You'd do well to remember the technique I used and continue to practice on your own." Franziska disguised her embarrassed blush with a confident smirk.

"...And that reminds me," she added. "Should you ever meet again with Phoenix Wright... make sure to show him what you learned."

After they had exchanged nods, Franziska hastily exited. Adrian stood alone in the exhibit hall - and smiled to herself.

A von Karma, she had learned, was not quite perfect in every way. But maybe that was the thing she admired most about her.


	2. Turnabout Transit: Edgeworth & Gumshoe

**February 16, 2019 3:13 PM**

**High Prosecutors' Offices**

**Room 1202**

* * *

"Hmm..."

The maroon-suited prosecutor leaned forward, narrowing his steely eyes to peruse the various items laid out on his desk, one by one:

An autopsy report in a manila envelope. A newspaper dated several months prior. A stack of black-and-white crime scene photos depicting a totaled truck and its deceased driver. A metal fragment of the busted back door of said truck.

...And a purple, vase-like object spattered with pink speckles.

On the opposite side of the desk, Detective Gumshoe stood at attention, his chest puffed out as he held his breath for an evaluation.

Prosecutor Edgeworth raised an eyebrow as he scrutinized the last object in the row. It appeared extremely worn and cracked. But the woman from the exhibit, with whom he had spoken on the phone some number of hours earlier, had informed him that this particular, cheap and frail item had in fact been broken and reassembled an unspecified number of times in the past, so cracks were to be expected.

For once, all of the necessary evidence was present and intact.

"Serial burglar Robin Ketchum was recently released from prison on strict parole," explained the prosecutor in summary of the current case. "The threat of being monitored clearly didn't faze the man, as he resumed his criminal activity right away."

Gumshoe blinked, listening carefully.

Edgeworth rose from his chair, gazing down at the Lordly Tailor ad on the front page of the 2018 newspaper. "Apparently falling behind the times while behind bars, he had heard of a rare urn on display nearby... without hearing the follow-up that its theft had already been attempted once by a much more prominent thief, and that the item turned out to be, in terms of dollars, worthless."

The prosecutor began to pace back and forth as he spoke. "His release date from prison closely coincided with the date of the item's shipment back to its original location, so he plotted then to hijack the truck that was carrying the urn in order to steal it. He tried to take command of the wheel by knocking out the driver with the blunt of this metal," - he motioned subtly to the metal fragment - "but things went awry and they swerved out of control, resulting in the death of the driver." Confident in this story, he nodded to himself. "Despite Ketchum's pleas to the contrary, this evidence should be enough to prove all that."

Gumshoe stood still at attention, not having moved a muscle.

"Well," Edgeworth remarked indifferently, "congratulations, Detective. Your assignment is complete. You're free to go."

Letting out his breath in a gust, Gumshoe loudly blurted, "Y-you mean it, Mr. Edgeworth!?" It was what he'd been waiting patiently to hear, and the detective's dark eyes shone with childish pride. "I really got all the stuff like I was supposed to?"

Such a reaction was beyond the prosecutor's comprehension. "I never said it was a job _well_-done. Only that it was a job _done_. Surely no one could take that as such a stellar compliment?"

"I could!" the detective shamelessly replied. "It's just been such a long time since I've actually gotten to help you with one of your own cases. I was trying real hard to do everything right this time!"

"...I see," said Edgeworth. "I'm not in the business of rewarding people for merely doing what they're expected to do, but at least you've made it through a day without a pay cut."

"W-wow!" There was a genuine happiness in the detective's voice. "Thank you, sir! Thanks a lot!"

Gumshoe lunged forward to grab both of his boss's hands in his own and give them a vigorous shake.

...Perhaps too vigorous.

"Wh...? Detective, be careful with-!"

The prosecutor's warning came a few seconds too late. During the shake, Gumshoe's bulky elbow knocked against the brightly-colored urn which, within a fraction of a second, fell in a blur to the hard-paneled floor.

"... ... ..."

"... ... ..."

Once the resounding echoes of the crash faded away, there was an uncomfortable stretch of silence as Gumshoe gaped, slack-jawed, at the shattered pieces.

"..._A day without a pay cut_," Edgeworth finally uttered, folding his arms across his chest. "It would appear that I spoke too soon."

"Ah... But... Sir... I..." Gumshoe struggled for a way to justify what had just happened. "At least... At least this thing is worthless, right?" he offered. "That's what you said, right? And what the lady at the exhibit said, too!"

Edgeworth shook his head. "Detective, I would have expected someone in your profession to understand." Slamming one hand on his desk, the prosecutor asserted with conviction, "Even the most monetarily worthless piece of evidence is _invaluable_ to the case it belongs to."

"... ...R-right," Gumshoe ultimately responded, nodding as if he understood. "_Invaluable_, pal. Like I said, it's a good thing it doesn't have a value, or else I'd be in big trouble! Ha ha! Ha..."

When the other man's stern gaze did not falter, the detective's own expression of amusement gradually morphed into one of dejection.

"I...I _am_ in big trouble, aren't I, Mr. Edgeworth?"

"This urn," Edgeworth emphasized, his voice raising with every exchange, "is - or was - or could have been - vital evidence in my case against the suspect. This _invaluable_ object was likely the entire reason for an innocent truck driver's death!"

"Vital evidence, sir..." Gumshoe echoed solemnly, squatting down by the mess. "Then... Then I'll just put it back together! Trust me; I'm not good at a lot of things, but I can do it when it counts-!"

"Hold it!" the prosecutor yelled, leaning awkwardly over his desk. "Touching it too much could compromise the trace evidence that may be on it. It still has yet to be tested in the lab. And now it's scattered here on my floor like a pile of spilled puzzle pieces..."

"Huh..." Gumshoe's expression grew even more confused than usual as he reached toward the center of the pile. "I know every puzzle's supposed to have an answer, pal - but where the heck would a piece like this fit in, anyway?"

"What?" The prosecutor realigned his gentlemanly posture and strode around to the opposite side of his desk, where Gumshoe sat holding up the 'piece' as daintily as was possible between the tips of two thick fingers.

"That's...not a part of the urn," Edgeworth remarked, his eyes widening.

"But I found it right here, sir." The detective pointed dutifully at the center of the heap.

"That was...inside...?" The gears of logic in the prosecutor's head began turning...

**. . . . . . . . . .**

_Click._

Edgeworth hung up the landline phone on his desk for a second time.

Another call to Miss Adrian Andrews of the Lordly Tailor exhibit had confirmed, with an extraordinary degree of certainty, that the urn was empty as of the day before its placement in the truck. The suspect had not switched any items out of the urn before replacing it with the item that had just been discovered inside of it.

"...His ankle monitor."

"Oh!" the detective exclaimed, holding the item above his head and squinting to inspect it. "So they could catch 'im if he started robbin' again!"

"Correct," said Edgeworth. "However... It will take a bit more investigation to determine whether this monitor actually belongs to Robin Ketchum."

"Wha...?"

"The culprit had to physically place this item in the urn," Edgeworth reasoned. "He came into contact with the urn, yet he didn't take it with him..."

"So you mean, that means he wasn't trying to steal it?" Gumshoe crossed his arms and furrowed his brow in Edgeworth-like concentration. "And that, together with this ankle bracelet, means..."

Edgeworth tapped one forefinger against his temple. "**_Eureka!_**" he dramatically announced.

"Sounds like deduction time, pal!" said Gumshoe, excited, almost able to hear the triumphant music swell up in the background. "This is always the best part!"

"Ketchum was apprehended the very day after his release from prison, near the scene of a crime with a straightforward motive that just happened to suit his M.O.," the prosecutor reviewed. "He may or may not have been there to do exactly what we all expected - but if he was missing his ankle bracelet at the time of the arrest, surely there would have been a fuss made about it. It could have, and would have, been tracked down immediately.

"The true culprit's motive was not the theft of the urn. It was to use the urn theft to create a convenient distraction. This person entered discreetly through the back of the truck, as evidenced by its broken door." The prosecutor gestured to the various photos and items of proof as he verbally wove the connections between them. "He used this metal fragment perhaps not just to knock out the driver, but to break the lock on his own monitor. He intended to hide it in a place that would throw police completely off his trail.

"You see, had Ketchum successfully stolen the urn, any attempts to monitor the owner of this bracelet would lead the police to Ketchum instead. ...Had the urn remained on the truck, police would still be kept busy following a false moving target instead of their desired runaway."

"But who's that runaway?" the detective prompted. "Who dunnit, pal?"

"A criminal with the desire to roam free _and_ a rivalry with our would-be suspect." Edgeworth picked up the newspaper on his desk, and flipped the page from the advertisement with the headline _TREASURES OF KURAIN_ to an article in the crime section entitled _VYING INMATES FINALLY SEPARATED_.

"I know a perfect candidate. _'Garrison Bandy, convicted burglar and former cellmate of Robin Ketchum, released early on parole,'_" he read, and then shifted his gaze straight ahead. "Around the same time the urn's exhibition began. He was locked up with his rival just long enough to hear that Ketchum probably wanted to steal it, leading him to devise this plan.

"...This shouldn't be very difficult to confirm," Edgeworth wrapped up. "Since he opened the urn to put the monitor inside, his prints should be on the lid. If he used gloves or wiped the prints, which is probable, we still have the most definitive proof we need: the monitor itself. And if police GPS is placing Bandy at the Los Angeles prosecutors' building at this very moment... then our case is more rock-solid than ever."

The detective let it sink in for a few silent seconds, and then broke into a bout of applause. "Amazing! You're amazing, Mr. Edgeworth!"

"Hmph." The sound of a single set of hands clapping didn't give Edgeworth a sense of accomplishment, but rather served the opposite effect, as it made him realize he just had delivered his dramatic deductive performance to an audience of one. ..._This_ one.

Gumshoe ceased applauding but remained grinning.

"Well," noted Edgeworth, "we can't celebrate just yet. First I'll make the call to definitively confirm the owner of this monitoring device."

"Yeah, that monitoring device," Gumshoe repeated, as he took another look and another prod at it.

"..." Edgeworth had had enough of watching his detective play with the evidence, and was ready to instruct him to put it down and leave, when-

"...Wait a sec! So... So was it a good thing that this urn here got knocked over after all?" Gumshoe mused, scratching the back of his head. It didn't occur to him that the same could have been achieved by simply opening the urn, rather than breaking it. "Talk about lucky, pal!"

The prosecutor thought, then turned away to murmur under his breath, "_Dumb_ luck is what I'd call it."

Gumshoe looked up at him. "Sir?"

Edgeworth cleared his throat. "As I said long before, Detective, your job here is done. You may take your leave until trial day." His eyes shot toward the door.

"Ah... All right, pal. Whatever your say!" He gave a sharp salute and took his leave as instructed.

Once he was out of the room, Edgeworth sighed at the purple shards still shattered and scattered around his otherwise tidy office. Why, he often wondered, did he even keep that detective around?

Then he shrugged his shoulders - and reluctantly cracked a smile. Of course, it was because...

"He _can_ do it when it counts, after all." ∎


End file.
